Rule 35, Alpha

-Chapter 20-

I blink in surprise, I had always known Tempest was a badass...but I never expected her to be trained to handle savage wolves...though I probably should have. She is my Luna after all, and a powerful witch.

"She left this in your hand...I assume as her explanation." Mom continues, and I look down at the piece of paper she places in my hand, the inked words in my mates handwriting.

Rule 41, Never let anyone suffer for your mistakes

Rule 22, protect family...always

My hand tightens on the paper, my heart clenching painfully as I realize what she meant by it...her family, her brother, the pack...and me....she risked her safety to protect all of us...

"What about Tempest? And her brother?" I ask.

"Not long after we secured the scene, I got a message from the clinic that they both wound up in one of the treatment rooms...in very peculiar circumstances..."

"She's here?! Where!?" I exclaim as I jump back up, ignoring the dizziness as I stumble to the door as well as my parents telling me to slow down. The revelation that my mate is close by seems to wake my wolf, his thoughts automatically syncing with mine.

~Find Mate, Find Mate...~ He chants drowsily, and I move faster as I pick up her lavender and mango scent, following it to another room across the hall. Reaching the door, I stutter to a halt at the sight in front of me...

My mate...marks glowing, sitting on the floor across from her brother with her hands resting on her knees. Her violet hair seems to glow as well as the vine like marks on the rest of her body, a sign she's using powerful magic.

"Tempest?" I call out to her, but she doesn't respond at all, not even a twitch. Moving closer, I notice that her brothers eyes are closed, and that both of them are glowing faintly...outside of Tempest's marks. I also take in the fact that her eyes are also shut, that she's wearing my jacket...and her familiar Zuzu, who's three times the size I remember, is curled up in her lap with the same glowing marks on his body as Tempest.

What is this?

I walk closer, and suddenly the sound of someone clearing their throat catches my attention. I turn around to see Tempest's mother standing in the doorway in front of my parents, an expression on her face that clearly reads worry...which makes me concerned as well.

"She's alright Butch, she's just not here." She explains...which only confuses me.

"What do you mean she isn't here? She's sitting right there?"

She sighs. "She's here physically, but not spiritually...her body is here, but her soul isn't...not completely...as well as Alec's."

Alright, now I'm even more confused.

"You might want to sit down, it's difficult to explain." She suggests, and I take the chair closest to my mate as she sits closer to Alec. She hands me a couple of old books, one handwritten in fancy calligraphy.

"Shortly before Tempest found out you were captured, she found a book of Aunt Serena's that gave her the answers she's been looking for...an explanation of what happened to her brother."

Cracking open the first book, I see its contents are also handwritten...and old.

"When Aunt Serena was Tempest's age, she encountered a dark wizard named Drayid that had experimented with dark magic so much in the attempt to turn immortal that he destroyed his physical body to the point he only had a soul....and a smoke like vessel. He became power hungry and started attaching himself to wizards infected by dark magic to drain them of their magic...like a parasite, he would do that to every person he could find...until Serena came along."